Rat
by Ancolie
Summary: "When I got a chance to get out, to stay alive, I took it. Why blame me? Because I'm not insane like all of them were?" Peter reflects on life and betrayal.


So it wasn't supposed to end like this.

Man, is that the understatement of the century or what? Here I am, a fucking rat in a fucking sewer. I'm wading through piles of shit, cockroaches crawling around beside me. My finger, my paw, whatever it is, it's bleeding like crazy and all I can think of is how infected it'll get. How the stump will swell up, pus everywhere, I'm thinking of gangrene and rot and decay.

It's always the details you dwell on.

Here's what I'm not thinking of- all the people that are dead because me. All the people who are going to Azkaban because of me. I'm not thinking of the hell I'll have to pay if any of this, _any _of this ever comes to light. I'm not thinking about God, because I don't think about God.

I'm thinking about my fucking finger.

Here's the thing- none of this was supposed to happen. At least, not really. I was always the kid that talked big because it was the only thing they could do. I was always the kid that hung out with the toughest ones, the cringing little shit that laughed too loud and at the wrong time, the stupid little bastard that everyone felt sorry for.

_I showed you, didn't I, James._

To be honest, I really didn't want any of this. No way. I would have been content being at a cushy desk job at the Ministry, on relying on the connections of my more talented friends, and if it wasn't for the fucking suicide pact we made at graduation, I would have gotten all of it.

Okay, maybe suicide pact is too harsh. But, you know, it's not far off the mark. We (and by we, I mean Sirius and James) decided we'd give it all to the Order of the Phoenix. Fight evil. Be heroes. And what the hell did the Order of the Phoenix ever do for any of us? All we did was watch our friends die, watch and wonder when it would be our turn.

I wasn't cut out for that, but they dragged me along into it, into all of that idiocy. They said it was a choice, but when had anything ever been a choice for me? I followed them. I followed them because of the gullible little shit I always was, always am, always will be. I followed them right into the midst of all this death and destruction and impossible odds, and I didn't like playing the hero. I wasn't like James or Sirius- I wasn't brave, I didn't even _want _to be brave. I just wanted to survive, to get out alive from that whole mess. Is that so selfish?

Is it any surprise then that I did what I did?

I'm not proud of it.

What I did, I didn't do because it was the right thing. I did it because it was the only thing. Sorry, Sirius and James, but me getting myself killed for some fucking noble cause, that isn't a choice.

It was the Prewetts dying that really did it in for me. Fabian and Gideon, hell, they were a year younger than we were. They were so full of life, literally bursting at the seams with it. I remember they'd always just pop up in the weirdest places at times, and there was nothing they loved more than to just get us all drunk and laughing and shit. No one, literally _no one _was less likely to wind up dead than them. I mean, really- who imagines someone that _alive _as anything other than alive? So when it happened, I was shook up, scared to death. If they were screwed, we were all screwed. And despite whatever Moody tried to say to the contrary, they didn't die like heroes, at least not in my eyes. They were nineteen year-old kids, and for Christ's sake, I saw the bodies. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't heroic, it just reeked of waste and futility.

I tried to tell James I wanted out. I tried, and he looked at me like I was such a fucking traitor. "You can't get out, not now that you're this far in," he said, "the Death Eaters, they'll kill you."

But why did you bring me into it in the first place, James?

When I told him I wanted out, Lily had just gotten pregnant. They were engaged, he was a man, he had to think like a man. But I wasn't, I was just this perpetual kid, and I was scared. I was scared because I knew I was going to die. I knew we were all going to die. And knowing them, they'd die fighting, they'd die for something they believed in.

But me, I'd die cowering and alone and for nothing, for fucking _nothing._

All my life, all I'd clung to was them. They were all I had, they were everything I wasn't. Everything was so fucking easy for them. They had looks, smarts, charisma, everything I didn't. I knew they really hated me. I knew they only put up with me out of some sick joke, out of some impulse they had to keep this little weird fucker around to laugh at. But still, I had to love myself. I had to look out for me. No else was going to.

When I got a chance to get out, to stay alive, I fucking took it. Why blame me? Because I'm not insane like all of them were?

The war wasn't going so well for us. People were getting blown up all over the place, and I couldn't take it. I'm a coward. I'm not so ashamed of that, not like they tried to make me be ashamed of it. To die for something, you have to believe in it. But me, I don't believe in anything.

I didn't mean to kill them. He said he just wanted the kid. Sure, I knew that'd tear Lily and James up, but kids die. That's the harsh fact of life. A dead kid is a dead kid, and if a dead kid can stop the carnage going on everywhere, so be it. I did it so it would be over. So it would all be over, and I could go home and kiss my mom and forget that any of this ever happened. So some fucking Chosen One wouldn't rise up in all of his fucking godliness and smite all the undeserving and bring harmony or whatever. I've never been an idealist, all I wanted was for the war to end, for all of it to end, and I was twenty-one and scared to death that I was going to be dead, be nothing but a corpse if someone didn't end it soon. Even if that someone was the Dark Lord.

Is it selfish to not want to die? If this life is it, if it's all we have, isn't it up to us to guard it like the biggest treasure we have?

So here I am in the sewers, blood on my hands and James, stupid idealistic James, dead in the blown-out ruins of his home and his perfect life.

This wasn't the way I wanted things to end. If it ended like I wanted it to, we'd all walk out alive, we could forget about all of this. We could just have a normal life.

Instead, we're not going to have a life at all.

The last thing I saw before I came down here, before I plunged myself into this filth and despair, the last thing I saw was Sirius's face, his body blasted back with all of those Muggles, like so many rag dolls tossed in the air, necks bent back, limbs eschew.

I almost didn't mind all the carnage I caused. It's sort of nice to know I amounted to something, even if was just to a murderer.

I am a rat. I am a miserable, filthy rat. But it's hard to kill a rat, isn't it? You try to drown them, and they learn to swim. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm still alive, even though there's nothing left to live for. No glorious cause, no friends, not even a future. I'm just alive because, goddamn it, I'm not going to give anyone the luxury, the satisfaction of killing me but myself. I've lived alone, and I'll die alone. I'll die as a rat.

No one's going to care about me. About poor, stupid Peter Pettigrew. Maybe if things work out like they should, me and Sirius will be both be dead, and no one will know what really happened, and my mom, my poor mom will be able to believe her son was a hero. Even a dead one- it's better to be a martyr than a traitor.

So here's my last will and testament, of Peter Pettigrew the man. To my friends, I give all of this fucking life, all the remnants of the man I could have been if only I'd been more like you. Bundle them up and carry them with you. Feed them, until they grow up, into hates and dreams and revenge. I salute you, friends. James, you died for something. Sirius, you lived for something. Remus, Mooney, damn it, I'm just glad you lived at all. Someone had to watch over us.

All the things I was, all the things that made me Peter Pettigrew- I give them to you all. Because maybe if you put all the pieces back together, you'll understand something- that I was a man just like you, and that what I did was what any sane person would do.

So dies the man. So lives the rat.


End file.
